


veni, vidi, vici

by uglygods



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: Book 4: The Battle of the Labyrinth (Percy Jackson), Demigods, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Mentions of alcoholism, Other, POV Third Person Omniscient, Present Tense, Runaway, Short Story, mentions of abuse, not beta read we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:01:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28056564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uglygods/pseuds/uglygods
Summary: “You’re a demigod."She stares at the scrawny boy before her, shaggy dark brown hair and a grandpa-ish fashion sense. Oak, he calls himself. He looks at her like she's something special.
Kudos: 1





	veni, vidi, vici

i.

She’s four, wide-eyed and clumsy, retrieving her step-dad a beer from the kitchen fridge. She asks why he drinks so much.

“Don’t worry ‘bout it,” he grumbles between gulps of alcohol, the smell causing her nose to scrunch up, which makes him laugh, “you’re a cute kid.”

ii.

It’s raining and she likes the rain.

Her mother is home, tired-eyes, messy hair, and her nurse scrubs still reeking of antiseptic. Her mother’s half-asleep, so she says that playing outside in the rain is fine as long as she comes home in the end.

When she got home, soaked to the bone and shivering, they were fighting again.

iii.

She’s six, banging her chubby fists against the door and begging for her step-father to let her out. The closet’s too small and she feels like the walls are coming in, crushing her.

They’re arguing again. It’s loud and violent and she stops begging, cowering against the wall as she begged the ground to swallow her up.

It’s an hour later when the closet door is unlocked as the tear-streaked face of her mother picks her up and carries her to bed. They ignore the bruise gracing her cheek-bone.

iv.

Her mother didn’t pick her up from school.

She sits with her Strawberry Shortcake bookbag sat on the chair beside her, staring back at her kindergarten’s principal who has tried three times and has been unable to reach her mother.

It’s an hour later that her step-dad comes, whisky-breath and his stained white wife-beater on display.

“My wife got caught up in work.”

Her principal purses her lips, but lets the child leave with him anyways.

v.

She’s eight, sobbing because she now processes her mother never came home.

Her step-father is her guardian and she hates it. She wishes her father, her real one, would find her and would come to her and would tell her everything’s going to be okay.

She told this to her step-father.

“Wishful thinkin’s for idiots.”

She stops wishing.

vi.

The police found her mother’s body at the bottom of the Alleghany River, which they were dragging for a missing child.

Her step-father huffs when he’s questioned. He cusses up a storm when she is. She’s in tears and the police officer grins, but it drips poison.

They’re alone together and there’s the sound of tearing and the police officer with the terrible smile is now a winged-woman, looking straight from a horror movie she had watched without her mother knowing.

She isn’t sure how, but she screams and lighting strikes through the roof, and the monster woman is gone. The building is on fire.

She’s the only one to blame.

vii.

She’s ten, her stomach grumbles and she ignores it.

Her step-father, now denounced to Frank, is drunk on the couch and she can taste the weed in the air. She cleans up his dishes and his mess and turns down the volume on the TV so it doesn’t wake him.

She glares at his sleeping form and promises herself that this wouldn’t be her future.

When the laundry has been loaded into the washer machine and she’s finished hand-washing the dishes, she climbs out the window and down the fire-escape, her Strawberry Shortcake bag now filled with supplies.

viii.

Frank gives up searching.

She isn't sure how she knows. She just does. For two weeks she eats out of dumpsters and moves from town to town, quick to make sure no one recognizes her and turns her in. 

She has seen, through the news broadcasting in some stores, that Frank has played make-believe for the camera, claiming how desperately he wants his darling step-daughter back.

They show a photo of her face, clean and smiling. But, it still looks like her.

Without thinking, she takes a pair of scissors she finds in an alley-way and chops her locks off, black waves falling into piles on the ground.

ix.

She’s twelve, sleeping in a dumpster, ignoring the smell, ignoring the cold.

There were monsters after her. They chase her down and cry about wanting to eat her, wanting to rip her to shreds because of who her father was.

Who is her father?

The smell of the trash masks her, so she sleeps in dumpsters and gets used to the stink.

x.

“You’re a demigod.”

She stares at the scrawny boy before her, shaggy dark brown hair and a grandpa-ish fashion sense. Oak, he calls himself. He looks at her like she's something special.

He finds her sleeping in another dumpster, nearly freezing to death as a layer of snow covers her thin blanket and causes her finger and toes to dark with frost-bite.

She would have taken death over Frank any day.

xi.

She’s twelve, and she’s at a place called Camp Half-Blood, sleeping on the floor of the Hermes cabin.

The Huntress of Artemis is there, whatever that means, and there’s a goddess missing. A real goddess, Artemis, and that is a big deal.

Thalia Grace catches her attention early-on. They have the same nose and dark hair, the homemade haircut for both wasn’t helping.

She is a demigod.

A demigod.

xii.

She’s thirteen, glaring at the sacrificing food line.

She wants to know who her father is. She asks every day while scraping in half of her fire, asking if he could claim her. She doesn’t beg, not wanting this man to hold that much power over her, and instead, attempts to make compromises.

“If you claim me,” she whispers to the crackling flames, “I’ll make you proud.”

xiii.

The Battle of the Labyrinth happens and she glares at the sky -- at the Gods -- while the fallen are given proper burials.

She fights tooth and nail, she can feel her body ready to drop to the ground, to accept sleep and allow the nightmare of a day to pass away.

She stands beside Katie Gardner when it happens.

“Oh, Gods!”

There’s a lighting bolt above her head.

* * *

**this was something i wrote for fun a few weeks ago and ngl i am tempted to make a longer fanfic for it... would anyone read that**


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